1949: Clark Gable’s Secret Romance

By Janet Franklin

Modern Screen, March 1949

He’d go off with other girls…but Virginia Grey was the one he’d always come back to. Now they’ve parted—and Hollywood wonders…

It had been months since the romance ended, yet it is just getting to be known around Hollywood today…

When Clark Gable left California for his European jaunt last summer he spent his last afternoon visiting a girl who lives not far from his house in the valley. It is said that it was a somewhat uncomfortable afternoon for both of them. Perhaps this was not to be wondered at, since he had been dating this girl for five years, and now, as it was being reported around town, he was bound for France—destined to be the fifth husband of Dolly O’Brien, who awaited him there.

No, the visit was not featured by the usual exchange of happy banter between them, nor lighthearted play-by-play. When train time neared, and Clark finally stood up and said, “Well…” the girl just quietly expressed the hope that he would have a good time. His mood was not unlike her own as he replied he’d try to.

There was, of course, no marriage to Dolly O’Brien. Clark was summoned back to Hollywood in a hurry by the sudden death of his father. He found a message from the girl—but he didn’t phone back immediately. When he did get around to it, she wasn’t in. It was not until he had tried for three days that he got her on the line. Then…they discovered that they had surprisingly little to say to each other. Something lay between them that they weren’t able to hurdle. It was one of those conversations in which the pauses are so much more eloquent than the words that just sound like prattle. It wasn’t long before Clark was saying, “Well, I’ll see you when I can find you”—and she was replying, “Yes.” Just, “Yes.”

The way it is told around town, neither was fooling the other with these closing words. They haven’t seen each other since.

But, even more unusual, it is not unlikely that Clark was a little baffled when he walked away from the telephone that night. For it was not in the books that this girl would act so distant, answer so coolly. Not this girl. In fact, any one who knew them both would bet on just an opposite reaction on her part. Because she was Virginia Grey…the same Virginia long-identified in Hollywood talk as “the girl Clark can always be sure of”!

“Why, Virginia is Clark’s ‘steady’!” gasped a well-known feminine star when she heard about it. “They’ve always been together—she was the first girl he was even friendly with after Carole’s death! And besides, who does she think she is? You just don’t do that to Clark Gable!”

An upset like this can affect a man’s confidence—the average man’s, that is. But Clark Gable’s? Any sort of report purporting to even connect him with marriage is always taken lightly (especially by Clark himself when asked about it). Any suggestion that love has so much as give him temporary pause raises a quick laugh. And to imply that he could possibly be carrying a torch for anyone—ridiculous!

Yet, there are certain facts to this parting that can’t be just poofed away, and when there are added up, the pointer on the scale moves exactly in that direction!

First of all, of course, you have to consider Virginia: tall, blonde, beautiful, talented enough so that her picture career may blossom into top stardom. When you look at her, it’s easy to understand why so many people in their circle believe that Clark was devoted to her.

Not one of those things…

How devoted? Well, this much can be said: When that which is known about the two, and that which is indicated by the nature of the bond between them, is pieced together, it makes up unto a definite romantic pattern—not just “another Gable thing.”

The attachment they had for each other was different in that it was not displayed much in public. While it is true that their names were frequently mentioned in the news, actually they were never out together more than three or four times since the day they first met when he, still an Army Air Force major, ran into her at Jill Winkler’s home and kissed her—though they had known each other but casually up to then. It just so happened that right from the start their interest in each other evolved closer to their homes and the home kind of living and bloomed stronger that way.

Instead of going out together, they visited each other. They talked, they took Sunday rides, they helped fix up each other’s houses; they seemed to enjoy each other in this sort of “togetherness.” Sometimes you would see Clark’s Cadillac convertible pulled up outside the fence of the Van Nuys airport on a sunny afternoon, and the two would sit contentedly watching the take-offs and landings. Maybe Virginia wasn’t interested in planes, as Clark undoubtedly is—but it was enough to be near him.

Afterward, they would drop in anywhere for a bite to eat—maybe a diner, or just a hamburger joint for a bowl of chili and a glass of buttermilk. It wouldn’t make any difference, just so it wasn’t where you had to eat Chinese food—Clark’s pet hate.

And like as not the day would be topped off by an hour or two at a golf driving range, with Clark hitting towering drives (with a tendency to fade off) and remarking philosophically, when they went higher than further, “That’ll bring rain!” And he’d give Virginia pointers on the game.

Even more—for the full five years they never missed dining with each other on any high holiday; never a Thanksgiving or Christmas in that period without “Paw” and “Ginny” (yes, their names for each other!) at Clark’s dinner table together. Clark would carve. He would give Virginia the dinner bell to ring for the next course. “Here, you be the hostess,” he would say happily.

These sessions, and others before his fireside as he oiled his guns or talked of his boyhood, were warm scenes—hardly to be tossed aside as the background of just a casual affair, as Hollywood well knows.

It is admittedly difficult to understand how Clark could pitch himself into the intimacy of this phase of his life entirely oblivious, as always, to the fact that one half of the world was speculating on the chances of Anita Colby or Iris Bynum becoming his wife, while the other half favored Dolly O’Brien or “Slim” Hawks. Maybe that’s just Clark Gable. Was Virginia oblivious? Nobody ever knew…except for one thing she was once heard to say in reply to a friend’s comment.

Said the friend: “You’re always with him, even while all that talk is going on about the others! He does go out with the others—but he always comes back to you. Why, it’s like the story of…of…”

“Like the story of ‘Back Street’? “prompted Virginia, when her friend hesitated as if loath to come out with it.

“Yes!” came the confirmation. But Virginia had nothing more to add. It was just as if she wanted to indicate that she had been thinking about it.

Clark Gable kissed Virginia Grey in 1943, but he first saw her in 1936 when she was hardly started on her film career. It was the day after Jean Harlow died and Virginia Grey was being considered by MGM heads to play Jean’s part in ‘Saratoga Trunk,’ which was only three-quarters completed. It was Clark who said, “Test her,” when the producers were undecided about Virginia. And it was Clark who made the tests with her and insured their success—even though, at the last moment it was decided to release the picture as originally made, with Harlow, plus certain added scenes using a double to round out the story.

From that day on…

From that day on, Virginia and Clark used to see each other around the studio—but only in passing. Yet when Clark made “Test Pilot” and “Idiot’s Delight,” Virginia got good parts in them and, as he admitted to friends, she knew it was he who had recommended her. They weren’t friends—they wouldn’t see each other for months sometimes, and then only by chance—but it was as if he had a continuing interest in the girl he had originally given a professional boost.

This slight contact between them was broken when Virginia left MGM for a contract at Universal and Clark joined the Air Force and was assigned to filming bombing operations over Germany. But their paths were to come together again. The date set by fate for this was December 21, 1943—a rainy, pre-Christmas afternoon. On that day Virginia, who had just finished decorating her Christmas tree, got a call from Jill Winkler, who asked her to drop over. Jill is the widow of Otto Winkler, Clark’s publicity man and close friend who was killed in the same airplane crash that took Carole Lombard’s life.

When she got to Jill’s house, she learned that Clark had had come back from Europe just the day before to cut and edit his bombing films, and that he was on his way over to see Jill. A little while later the bell ang and Clark entered, dripping wet. Jill was barely starting to present the two to each other when Clark took action to make this unnecessary. He cried out recognition in high glee, strode over and took her in his arms.

Inasmuch as he had never exhibited that kind of warmth to her before, maybe Virginia should have entered a protest right then and there. But she didn’t. Maybe she was just nonplussed by the suddenness of it. Or—well, it was wartime, Clark was in uniform, and wasn’t it a thing between girls those days that getting into the Army and Navy seemed to be having an unusual effect on fellows, and one had to be tolerant with them? One thing is definitely known. Virginia considered Clark’s demonstrative greeting as a flash of the moment, soon to be forgotten.

She was wrong.

Clark’s enthusiasm for her didn’t abate a bit. Before he left he had won from her an acceptance to have dinner with him at his place the next night. She accepted, went and had a wonderful time. It was not only fun, not only an event to be commemorated by a whopping bottle of Chanel No. 5 which he insisted she take as a souvenir of the occasion, but the first of many other similar dinners and many other happy days together.

She got to know a lot about Clark. She saw, and is quoted as reporting, that while the places of the fashionable had an attraction for him, he found them too cobwebby underfoot for permanent comfort. He was a man who had never denied his simple background nor accounted for his success by any other words than, “How lucky can you be?”

He told Virginia about his boyhood, when he loved to go ice-skating and return home to have his mother stick his half-frozen feet in a tub of hot water and feed him gingerbread. This story, she decided later, was a sort of alibi for the frequent presence on his dinner table of his favorite dessert—gingerbread.

Clark’s house stands on a 15-acre tract of land. After the death of Carole he talked often of selling it. But the idea seemed to fade after he met Virginia. She admitted quite freely to her friends that she had talked against it; that she had told Clark he was a homesteader at heart and would find himself missing the place the moment it was no longer his. And Clark must have listened because he would quote her when his friends asked if he was going to dispose of the house. “Ginny thinks I ought to keep it,” he would reply simply.

Watching them, hearing of their activities, their friends decided they were both homesteaders. Clark has a fence around his house and corral. Virginia helped him whitewash it—a job that took five days. His driveway is lined with oleander bushes. Virginia helped select and plant them. For that matter, when she bought piping to lay under her lawn for a watering system, it was Clark’s turn to help her and he carted every foot of the pipe to his place so he could cut and thread the ends to fit. He’s handy that way.

It was all fun. They were fun. Being together was fun. That’s why those who were close enough to them to see this, find it difficult to think of them permanently apart now. It isn’t that they suspect Clark’s heart is breaking but that they know he loved being with Virginia, loved being able to be himself when he was with her—which is perhaps more important for him.

Some of his friends catch themselves watching him for an indication of how he feels about the split-up. They know that a happy Clark shows the world how it is going with him—he carries his disposition on his sleeve, if not his heart. In a figurative way, he loves to take off his shoes, curl up his feet and expand into amusing talk if he is happy. If he is unhappy, he makes this plain too. He may be with the most beautiful girl in the world, but the tell-tale actions mean the same thing. He sits up severely straight, he tightens and jerks at his necktie, he clock-watches and, if he talks at all, he bites his words until they come out raw and encourage no answers.

But it is Virginia and her reasons for seemingly being able to take the break-up in calm stride (if she didn’t actually precipitate it, as some hold), that intrigues most of their friends. Did anything new in their relationship form the basis for the change in her attitude which formerly had seen her ready to run to him whenever and however he beckoned? Had she once loved him so once that it had made no difference who else he was seen with—and now, is this love gone?

Or is it the reverse? Did this love grow until it could no longer share him, could no longer be all of her life and just a part of his—and moved her, in desperation, to finish it?